Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Kira Recommends "The Red Rising Trilogy"

Red Rising
Okay, I'll be the first to admit it- we're all growing tired of the 'chosen teenager takes down an oppressive, dysfunctional social hierarchy in a dystopian future', so I began reading 'Red Rising' with more than a few grains of salt. However, this trilogy is less like 'The Hunger Games'  or 'Divergent', and reads more like 'Ender's Game' or a Sci-Fi version of Game of Thrones (if it only focused on Jon Snow). There's a reason this book is in the Science Fiction part of our library and not the Young Adult section, and that's because this series is very, very heavy. I'm glad I gave it a chance, because through the first half of 'Red Rising' I scoffed at how predictable it was. The main character, Darrow, is a red, the lowest in a color-based society, where he works as a miner on Mars. Through a series of events, he's turned into a gold, the rulers of the color caste system, where an underground organization uses him for their own purposes (to have all colors treated as equals) using Darrow as their golden proxy. This is where I rolled my eyes and shook my head, dreading another Hunger Games. Luckily, the rest of 'Red Rising' played out much differently than anticipated, and by the time 'Golden Son' rolls around, Darrow isn't even a teenager anymore. By the time I finished 'Golden Son​' I could hardly wait to read 'Morningstar', and I finished it in 2 days. All in all, if you like the Ender series, and you can get past the first half of 'Red Rising', chances are you will love this trilogy.

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